Pros: Specs look great on paper. I'd love to get this working for a pfSense build.

Cons: Board will not boot. I tried four different sticks of memory in two boards (RMA on first one), with no results. I get beep codes with no memory stick, but as soon as I put one in, beep codes stop and I have no way to troubleshoot.

Other Thoughts: I can't see myself recommending this board. I've sunk too much money into this, and it simply won't work. Now I'm out several hundred dollars for non-working hardware to sit on a table. Makes a great paperweight, though.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Robert,

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
This specific server has a SoC CPU, the only foreign component needed is memory, the right kind of memory. The productive information about the memory should be used up to 4GB non-ECC 1333MHz Unbuffered DDR3 SODIMM.
What kind of RAM you are using? It appears that the root cause if following to your memory product, not the board.

If you have any technical inquiry, please contact me with detail problem description at william@asrockamerica.com
I will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Rack Support
Email: http://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp?ln=en

Pros: Small, silent, low power.

Cons: This motherboard has design problem. My motherboard is broken after 1.5 years.

Other Thoughts: don't buy it.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued ASRock Customer,

We are sorry to hear that. How the motherboard is broken? Broken in half? I/O ports broken? Will not power on (PSU?)? Or will not POST (memory?)? Did you contact ASRock Rack for troubleshooting to rule out any root cause or just the preliminary opinion?
If you have any technical inquiry, please contact me with detail problem description at william@asrockamerica.com
I will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Rack Support
Email: http://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp?ln=en

Pros: Its low power, silent and relatively cool. No issues while it ran. Plenty of features to perform multiple roles, i used it as a router and it was reliable.

Cons: Well it died. I was performing network upgrades and on restart it booted fine but failed to aquire an ip for the WAN. I restarted it an all i got was a blank active video output and fans spinning. No beeps, no error, no POST, nothing. I feel SOL because of ASROCK's 1 year warranty.

Other Thoughts: Id love to recommend this but a a peice of server hardware it only lasted 1.5 years at near 24/7. Id like to have it last longer.

If you're going to use this for pfsense or freenas, I'd suggest going with something that has more longevity.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued ASRock Customer

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
This mini-ITX server board is using a SoC CPU. The only foreign component needed is memory. Supposing that the CPU is still in good working condition, but have you tried to test the memory. Or at least eliminate the memory error by using one stick at a time in slot 1, then rotate to the other? If you haven’t submitted a RMA Request with us, please hold your conclusion because you may still be under manufacture warranty.
Please contact me William at William@asrockamerica.com

Thank you

ASRock Rack Support
Email: http://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp?ln=en

Pros: Runs cool was able to buy lame quality drives (x4) and setup freenas easlily. everything worked right out of the box. put all this in a tiny 1u sized case with the help of some 2.5 adapters sold here at newegg. could have done 5 drives maybe 6 if one was external. and pretty sure one could even use the additional 2 sata iii ports and do 8. USB 3 is good. and the method I use for backup. has a nice four pin fan header but only one (the others are three pin) takes single channel memory. dual nics. low power.

Cons: it could be faster? it could take ecc memory but who wants to pay for it? plus it's not super important in my application.

Pros: Integrated CPU with passive cooling makes this a great choice for quiet PCs.

Cons: The atom processor is not powerful enough to smoothly render playback of 720p video, so I got a PCIe x16 video card and plugged it into the PCIe x16 slot. But, so long as that card is plugged in, the computer won't boot, not even to bios (card works in another computer just fine). Turns out that that isn't a real PCIe x16 slot on this motherboard. If you carefully read the product description, it mentions it's an x16-sized slot, but with only contacts in it for x1-sized cards... o_O you can see the missing contacts by examining the slot closely with a flashlight. Why ASRock didn't just put an x1-sized slot on this board is beyond me, and it is extremely misleading.

Other Thoughts: XBMC on Ubuntu 14.04

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
The slot is PCIe 3.0 x 16 with PCIe x 1 speed.
For more information, please visit the specification link at below.
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=AD2550R/U3S3#

If you have any technical inquiry, please contact us with detail problem description at william@asrockamerica.com. We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: http://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp?ln=en

Pros: Just plug and play. Stable. 5 SATA ports + 2 SATA ports

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Finally I found ITX board to build a solid File Server.

Just built 16 TB Home File Server. Just enough ports to have RAID 5 of 4TB disks with SSD for SYSTEM drive. Runs without any issues since I built it. No blue screens. Very solid board.
Initially was worried of poor performance of RAID 5, but figure it out that issue was not with motherboard or chipset. Issue was that RAID5 had 64 kb strip size, but I formatted NTFS with 4kb sector size. in RAID 5 sector size and RAID strip size MUST match to avoid extra writes. Once it was done, RAID 5 is very fast. CPU power just enough to run File Server. During file copy CPU utilization is about 15-25% and memory utilization is about 50% of 4GB. Network interface is fast and allowed me to team it as Link Aggregation giving me room for network traffic with 2GB/s link speed. Drivers CD had all drivers to install under Windows Server 2008 R2. I do not think I had to go online to find any other driver.
USB 3 is working great.
I would strongly recommend this board if you are looking to build Home Server. I am not sure it would be good for HTPC because only 4 GB or RAM can be installed. I did not try to put more, but some people claimed they did.

Pros: Board worked flawlessly out of the box. We setup a basic Windows 7 system with file shares for a workgroup "NAS". Board has all the features you could ask for and appears to be of high quality, good capacitors, etc.

Cons: None so far. It does everything we expected it to.

Other Thoughts: We have 2 x 4GB sticks of memory and all 8GB shows up in the BIOS and in Windows. I was assuming we would be limited to 4GB, but pleasantly surprised when it took 8!

Pros: This board has every connector you can ever want on it. 2 NIC's that are just awesome. Intel RAID which is fast. Plenty of sata ports, usb ports, on board graphics. Great little Ubuntu server. Combine this with two SSD's in RAID 1 and you got your self a little speed demon.

Cons: no 1U back plate. this is standard height. But I got over it quickly after I saw the amount of connectors this board has to offer. RAM is laptop memory and max is 4GB. Which is not bad, but still rather disappointing since most servers prefer to have more memory.

Other Thoughts: I put this together into a iStar case with iStar power supply 1U rack mount and this is great for things like a phone server, or mini web server (Ubuntu, not windows)

Pros: The amount of hardware on this small board is amazing. This is great for a small NAS server or for a custom firewall. I am running Ubuntu Linux on it and using it as a small web server with a SSD drive 4GB RAM max. It's good for a small server and excellent on power friendly. Don't expect this to run a million websites. But it will run a few heavy websites rather well.

Cons: no io shield for a 1u case which is what I would primarily use this type of board for. But I made my own io shield so it wasn't so bad. Don't waste time with windows server for this type of unit. Processor is under powered for that.

Pros: Great little board with plenty of sata connections. No issues getting it up and running and everything appears to be very stable. I also like the USB Slot on board. Dual Nics.

Cons: Not the hardware's fault but I wish I went with something else for FreeNas. Don't get me wrong, it's up and running with no hacks, but the 4 gig limitation for memory is going to be a problem in the long run with ZFS.